arts & entertainment

is'

Off-Broadway show's one-liners,
double-entendres and riotous
routines come to JET.

s

Suzanne Chessler

"His wife turns to the pro. 'See? Didn't I tell
you he was stupid?"'
The comedy revue, based on the website
from which the core idea and title were
aniel Okrent prefers not to preview
taken, runs Nov. 26-Dec. 21 at the Aaron
any of the comedy that audiences
DeRoy Theatre inside the Jewish Community
will hear in Old Jews Telling Jokes,
Center in West Bloomfield.
the stage production he devel-
Okrent will look in on
oped with Peter Gethers.
a December performance,
Instead, the former
directed by Kayla Gordon and
Detroiter offers an alterna-
featuring Greg Trzaskoma,
tive that suggests his sense
Fred Buchalter, Dory Peltyn,
of humor as expressed in the
Eric Gutman and Sandra
show soon to be presented by
Birch.
Jewish Ensemble Theatre.
"Having done a lot of
The longtime journal-
things in my career, I've never
ist, taking a plunge into
done anything to make people
lighthearted entertainment
so happy:' says Okrent, 66, in
— after turning out serious
a phone conversation from
history books (Great Fortune: Detroit nativ e Daniel
his New York home. "There's
The Epic of Rockefeller Center Okrent
no better feeling than to sit at
and Last Call: The Rise and
the back of an audience and
Fall of Prohibition) and maga-
see people having a wonderful
zine articles, including 2009's "Detroit: The
time.
Death — and Possible Life — of a Great
"It brings back my childhood in Detroit,
City" for Time — delivers:
being the son of a man who told jokes and
"Lupowitz comes home from the office early had many friends who told jokes. It gives me
one day and finds his wife in bed with her
this warm, familial feeling.
tennis pro.
"In fact, in the show, there's a monologue
"'What are you doing?' the husband shouts. based on my life and my parents' coming to

Special to the Jewish News

D

visit me in New York when I was a
young man. It captures how jokes
played a role in our lives."
-
Okrent, preparing to open a
London version of the show after
successful runs in New York and
6 !.
Chicago, was the first public editor
of the New York Times and has been an edi-
tor at Time and Life magazines.
"This production doesn't fit in with my
career, and that's what's fun about it:' says
Okrent. "I never worked in the theater before
and had never done anything specifically
designed to give people joy."
Okrent knew he wanted to be a writer
when he was 8 years old. A friend of his
father suggested he send a letter to the editor
at the Detroit News.
"It was published, and I saw my name in
print:' Okrent says. "That just seduced me."
After working on school papers at Post
Junior High School and Cass Technical High
School, both in Detroit, and the University
of Michigan, Okrent became an editor for
publishing houses, including Alfred A. Knopf
and Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.
Magazines and his own books followed,
and the serious writing continues as he
develops a text about Jewish immigration in
the early 20th century.
"One of the things critical about this show
is that it's not standup comed y; ' Okrent says.
"The jokes are acted out as little sketches,
and the interactions make it all very hilari-
ous."
Work on the stage production launched
after Okrent brought his wit to the Web.
"When [the website] Old Jews Telling

Old Jews on page 50

Jews

Nate Bloom

Special to the Jewish News

At The Movies

Hollywood took the last Hunger Games
novel and turned
it into two mov-
ies. Hunger Games:

Mockingjay, Part I,

opens on Friday, Nov.
21. Jennifer Lawrence
stars again as the
heroine, Katniss, with
Elizabeth Banks, 40,
Banks
returning as the ditzy
chaperone, Effie Trinket. The screen-
play is by Danny Strong, 40.

TV Notes

On Nov. 21 at 9 p.m., the National

42

Jokes first went online, 15 people I know told
me about it because they know I'm an old
Jew who tells jokes:' Okrent recalls. "I saw
it, flipped for it and wrote the guys in charge
(Sam Hoffman and Eric Spiegelman, who
wrote a book of the same name as well).
"Three or four days after my 60th birth-
day, I told four jokes [on the site] and
thought I did pretty well. Meryl Streep, a
friend of a friend, told me I did exceptionally
well, and that's a high compliment."
After his appearance, a stage version of the
website was suggested by Gethers, a friend
from the early days in publishing. It took
them about three years to get their ideas
realized.
The two talked about jokes they knew in
common, did research, sent drafts back and
forth and set up table readings with actors in
front of friends and colleagues. Many revi-
sions took place.
"Jokes seem to come from bad news and
sadness — bad relationships, bad sex, bad
jobs, bad days at work," Okrent says. "We
deal with the problems and pains in our lives
by making fun of them.
"I think that's characterized Jewish dis-
course for centuries. Back in the Bible, Isaac
was a joker.
"I think Jewish humor became American
humor and pervaded the culture because
everybody can relate to this notion of `0y,
life is tsuris (trouble); how can we get some
nachas (joy) out of it?"'
The production includes a video sequence
of one particular comedian emblematic of
the entire genre. Comedians Carl Reiner and
Freddie Roman were consulted as part of the

November 20 • 2014

m

Geographic Channel premieres Eat:
The Story of Food, a six-hour mini-
series that looks at the evolution of
food over the course of humankind,
from our ancestors throwing raw
meat onto a fire for the first time to
teams of lab technicians perfecting
the crunch of a potato chip.
More important, it will show how
this evolution of what and how we eat
has actually defined human civiliza-
tion and cultures around the globe.
More than 70 chefs, food writers
and others in related fields are inter-
viewed, including TV chef Nigella
Lawson, 54; former New York Times
restaurant critic and University of
Michigan alumna Ruth Reich!, 64;
food journalist Michael Pollan, 59;
and top Los Angeles-based chef

Eric Greenspan,

39. Greenspan also
is the star of Eric

Greenspan Is Hungry,

his own National
Geographic series
debuting at 10 p.m.
Monday, Nov. 24.
Greenspan
Crackle is a Web-
based TV channel,
owned by Sony, which presents,
for free, original TV series. It's the
home of the Jerry Seinfeld series

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,

now in its fourth season. New epi-
sodes are posted on Thursdays but
can be viewed any time after posting.
Last week, Seinfeld, 60, rode with
Amy Schumer, 33.
Another 2014 Crackle original, the

12-episode legal/murder mystery
thriller Sequestered, can now be
viewed in its entirety.
The cast includes
James Maslow, 24;
Heather Dubrow, 45
(Real Housewives of
Orange County); and
Dina Meyer, 45.
The Saturday,
Nov. 22, episode of
Dubrow

Saturday Night Live

features Mark Ronson, 39, and Bruno
Mars as musical guests. Together they
will perform "Uptown Funk," a song
from Ronson's just-released album,
Uptown Special. Ronson, the son of
British Jews, was mostly raised in the
U.S. Mars' paternal grandmother was
Jewish.

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